Jessica Murray

So yeah, most shops will have a poster in the window or somewhere in the store.

But I imagine the vast majority of shoppers would not spot these.

There's so many signs up in a typical supermarket, you're probably unlikely to see something like that.

Yeah, well, I think it's a combination of, you know, as the technology has become more accessible, it's become cheaper, it's become easier to get.

But also, I mean, shops are having to deal with a huge surge in shoplifting and antisocial behaviour.

Security guards are having to deal with a lot more violence and aggression from customers.

So you can see why it is an appealing option.

It's a good way of being able to try and clamp down on that.

I think the thing that needs to be sort of emphasised is that FaceWatch does claim that its technology is 99.98% accurate.

But obviously there is still a margin of error here and it's up to these members of staff to essentially look at the match, look at the person in front of them and make that judgment call of actually, yes, this is the person who has been flagged on the system as a potential shoplifter or whatever the issue might be.

They have to make that judgment call in person.

So I think it depends on who you ask.

So Facewatch obviously will say that it's been hugely successful.

They said that in 2025, they triggered over 500,000 alerts of known offenders in shops across the country.

They haven't released the data on how many alerts were kind of false alerts or inaccurate.

Whether that data exists, I don't know.

I mean, there's been no data to suggest that it has led to a decline in shoplifting yet, although it's, as I say, the technology is still very new and

The amount of shops it's been employed in is still relatively small in the grand scheme of things.

So I think we're still a little way of being able to see what its actual impact is on crime.

No.